Picsdream- India's First Premier Photography Community
Picsdream is India's first photographer community and marketplace for photographers to share, showcase and monetise thier photos brought to you by a bunch of photography evangelists.
How did the entrepreneurial bug bite you?
Mahesh Nair, Founder & CEO of Picsdream, has been a serial entrepreneur for 20 years and then a full time photographer for a decade. After two successful and stimulating decades in the corporate and startup world, Mahesh quit his corporate and start-up phase of his career in 2005 to pursue his passion for nature and wildlife photography. He became a professional photographer focusing on nature, wildlife and his work has been showcased by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), as well as National Geographic Store.
His journey as a photographer over the last decade made him realize that Indian photographers still do not have tangible avenues to showcase their work. The often asked question- “What can I do with my photographs?” drove him to find a solution. He felt the urgent need for a platform for community building for photographers to share and learn and better their photography as well as monetize their work – and so Picsdream was born.
What were the challenges before you while setting up this startup?
There are two main challenges that we faced while setting up Picsdream. The first one was hiring the right talent. For a startup to have the right talent to attract and retain their users is very essential. Since Picsdream is not another e Tail or social networking site, it took time to explain the vision and hire the right team. The second one is to have the right technology team to develop a robust platform that can scale up to user requirement and growth. Bootstrapping and lean working is also a challenge when working with teams that have no start up experience
What are the challenges for startup companies setting up shop in India?
There are many challenges that face a startup. The first comes from the cumbersome laws in India in setting up a company. While buzzwords like “single-window clearance” are thrown around, the reality is still different and navigating ROC, VAT, Service Tax etc. is still difficult for an entrepreneur and quite frustrating when pursuing a new business model that has no precedent. This significantly takes away the Founder’s bandwidth from core business. It is important to move quickly to making the revenue streams happen but equally important to ensure that it is done the right way in compliance with all the right statutes.
How is your business model different from the existing ones?
There are international sites like 500px, Smugmug and Crated which offers similar services. However, Picsdream is the first Indian platform focused on Indian photographers and the Indian market. The main difference is that Picsdream is first a photographer community site and then a marketplace. The platform is meant for all photographers - beginners to semi professionals. It is a platform for them to interact, share and learn best practices apart from selling their work. The main competition for Picsdream in India would be from stock photo sites, which primarily cater to the advertising industry. Picsdream shall address a more diverse market altogether, which would include individuals as well as institutional buyers.
Picsdream would be primarily crowd sourced and hence have a mass appeal, whereas the stock photo sites do not provide such a platform.
Furthermore, the photographs on Picsdream would be available to consumers to buy as prints on the medium of their choice as well as in the download-ready form.
Picsdream would be unique in its focus of building a strong community that promotes sharing and learning. We have some more differentiators with respect to North American sites. However, I would like to share these a little down the line.
Who are your clients? How do you look at expanding?
With regards to contributors, Picsdream shall target the large pool of amateur and semi-professional photographers in India. As the brand and platform evolve, and a stronger community builds, the brand also aims to get participation from professional photographers.
With regards to buyers, Picsdream shall target both individual consumers (B2C) and institutional buyers (B2B) located anywhere across India. While initial focus would be on the B2B segment, over the next few years the B2C segment is expected to contribute to the larger part of the revenues.
The best and worst memories while setting up
Memories? I am still living the early days of Picsdream yet. Maybe I will have a good answer to this a couple of years down the line.
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